The Good, the Bad and the Savage

Dice Probability

Have you ever sat down to advance your character and sat down to advance your Wild Card only to find yourself asking, “Should I or should I not raise this skill/trait by a die type or should I take an edge that gives me a modifier of some sort?” Well, ask no more friend because I’ve got the answer to that question and I found it using…MATH.

Savage Worlds is a beautiful simply system because for a large portion of the time, you only need to remember one number: 4. The number of success.
You might also want to remember the number 1, the number of automatic failure.

With those two things in mind, I’ve calculated your chance of succeeding (rolling a 4 or better), succeeding with a raise (rolling an 8 or better), failing (which is just the inverse of succeeding), and critical failure (rolling a 1 on both dice).

Die Type

%Success

%Gain

%Raise

%Gain

%Failure

&Gain

%CriticalFailure

%Gain

d4-2

33%

-

8.3%

-

67%

-

4.2%

-

d4

50%

+17%

13.8%

+5.5%

50%

-17%

4.2%

+/-0%

d6

50%

+/-0%

13.8%

+/-0%

50%

+/-0%

2.7%

-1.5%

d8

62.5

+12.5%

13.8%

+/-0%

37.5%

-12.5%

2.1%

-0.6%

d10

70%

+7.5%

30%

+16.2%

30%

-7.5%

1.7%

-0.4%

d12

75%

+5%

41.7%

+11.7%

25%

-5%

1.4%

-0.3%

d12+1

83%

+8%

50%

+8.3%

17%

-8%

1.4%

+/-0%

d12+2

91.6%

+8.6%

58.3%

+8.3%

8.4%

-8.6%

1.4%

+/-0%

The next thing you might be wondering is how much do flat modifiers (adding or subtracting a number to the result of a die) affect your odds of success. The answer is a lot although larger dice are affected less than smaller dice, whether the modifier is positive or negative.
The chart below lists modified chances of success for modifiers from +2 down to -5 (full wounds and fully fatigued). Remember that your chance of failure is always the inverse your chance of success. Flat modifiers to not affect critical failure.. Chance of a raise is in parentheses.